A Year Over The Wall

Pages

Well today got off to the worst possible start. I was in bed, it was dark and so I reached out for my phone to see the time. I knocked a glass off the table and it smashed all over the floor. I got up for a dustpan and brush but stood on a piece of glass in the meantime. A fragment of glass got stuck in my toe; yes you guessed it, in my already battered big toe. I got the glass out luckily and it bled a little but no major harm done. I’m so bloody clumsy sometimes.

So today we have no internet. What on earth am I going to do with myself!! I put the TV. on and put Eurosport on because it’s the only channel I can get in English. It had to be tennis on didn’t it. Of all the sports in the world I only ever seem to see tennis and skiing on this channel and they happen to be the two sports I don’t give a toss about. I tried watching some anyway because Andy Murray was playing. It was either that or ‘The Big Bang Theory’ which was badly dubbed in German. I can’t stand English dubbed films let alone German ones. This could turn into a very boring week or two without the internet. At least I can keep up to date with my diary offline and maybe sort my music out into some kind of order on the laptop.

It turns out that Tomas let us borrow his dongle so we had internet for the day after all. It gave me a chance to do all the important things like update my Mafia Wars on Facebook, you know, all them important jobs. I haven’t had any reply from UPS yet but as Agnieszka says, no news is good news. He might be thinking about taking me on. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Agnieszka threw bags full of clothes out today. I took them over the road to the Red Cross collection bin. I was quite surprised really, for someone who is usually so unorganised and messy it was a shock to see her getting stuck into something like that and obviously I was happy because the more that gets thrown the better as far as I’m concerned.

I had a message on the Toytown website today. It was from Oliver a 29 year old from London who’s thinking of moving over here to Dresden to live with his girlfriend. I gave him all the advice I could think of but I don’t think anything can really prepare you for such a culture change. To move abroad where they talk a different language I think having patience and an open mind have to be the main ingredients. If you have both of them then I think your half way there.

Agnieszka made a good point tonight. I asked why there were a million Polish living in England but not many living in Germany which is its border country and a much nicer place to live. Apparently the border is closed to Polish and Czechs until March this year when the law changes. That’s why it’s so important for me to get a job pretty quickly because Germany is sure to be overrun with Polish soon looking for a better life. I don’t know how that is going to go down with Germany though who I’m quickly realising is still quite a racist country that hasn’t been overrun with foreigners yet. There’s more Turkish in Germany than anything else which was a big shock to me. I haven’t met one Turk yet, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever met a Turk in my life!!

Ouch. I feel terrible. My headache was a really bad one this morning. I went to the stable and stupidly forgot my tablets and so had to go through the pain all morning. I had to go, Max was still ill and I couldn’t leave Agnieszka to do it all alone. I admit the drinking last night didn’t help the headache but I refuse to accept that is the reason behind it. My head was thumping, I felt dizzy, faint, sick and tired and just wanted to go home but couldn’t because the dentist came to look at the horses teeth and we had to wait for him. He seemed a really nice bloke. Patrick was Irish and said he knows an English builder who has lots of English guys working for him and might have some work for me. He’s going to have a word with him and see what he says. Any work will do me right now. Agnieszka isn’t keen because it would mean not learning German whilst around English guys and I wouldn’t be able to help in the stables. I think there’s another reason too and that is that she’s scared I’m going to be drinking with the lads all the time after work. She might have a good reason to worry about that knowing what I’m like.

I walked Iris’ horse Stinky this morning. It’s nice meeting new horses because every horse has a different character just like people do. You get used to each horse and get to know their habits, manners and moods. Stinky is a lovely horse. I always thought from a distance that he was a pretty boring and lazy looking horse but on close inspection he is lovely. Iris clearly looks after him well with his immaculate socks and blanket on and very well brushed. He’s about 8 years old but seemed to be scared at the slightest of noise. I’ve said I’ll happily look after him if they ever want to go for a holiday.

One good thing came out of this morning. Roman stopped me at the stables and said Hertha Berlin on Sunday. It turns out I am going with him and Tomas to watch the match!! My first German match and it's the team I'd planned on supporting out here. I got excited and thought I was going to the Olympic Stadion which is Herthas home ground and where the World Cup final was held when Germany hosted it last. It turns out that we are just off to watch it in a bar but what the hell, a match is a match and I’m still excited. I wonder who they are playing.

Once we got home I just had my tablet and a long bath before going straight to sleep for about 3 hours. After some nice tuna pasta I was feeling a bit better and spent the night relaxing with a little Stumble Upon and I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here in the background. There’s some blonde German model on it that has just walked out of the jungle. The rest of the contestants hated her so much that they demanded that she goes or they all go because they couldn’t stand being with her anymore.

I sent an email to the personnel manager at UPS today pretty much begging him to give me a chance. UPS might be my only chance now otherwise we could well be heading to Sweden to live. The thing is UPS is even more suitable right now because of the hours being 5-8am. I could then still have time to go to the stables afterwards to help Agnieszka, especially now that she’s pregnant. I’m definitely going to be needed there when her bump starts showing. Failing UPS or us not getting a few more horses to train in the next month or so for extra money then I think we might just be left with no choice but Sweden where Agnieszka is confident we can both get work easily. I do love Sweden but after being there in November last year, I am still a little faint from the price of a beer being around £8!!!! Can I live with that?

Max sent an e-mail saying he was ill today so I went to do his work. I seem to go every Monday now anyway, that’s when there’s the most work to do because the horses aren’t cleaned out on a Sunday. I only did a couple of horse boxes and soon got a sweat on. I realised just how hard it is and started feeling a little sorry for Agnieszka having to do that every day. Roman popped into the stable today. He’s from Slovenia I think but them, Czechs and Poles all understand each others language. It turns out he’s a Liverpool fan too so we found a common ground. He used to work for our stable but it turns out he had a drink problem and kept turning up to work drunk. He’s working just a few stables away now and seems a nice enough bloke.

I ran out of cigarettes today so Tomas took us to get 200 from the Chinese where he’d got some before. I was expecting a house somewhere but was shocked when he took us to the far end of a Netto car park where there was a tiny Chinese girl sat on a chair shivering to death. She went to get us 200 Palace which we’d never heard of but a smoke was a smoke as far as I was concerned and it turned out that they aren’t that bad. She fetched them from 50 metres behind her from under a bush!! Poor sod, what kind of a life is that sat getting cold all day just to make a few cents on a packet of cigarettes. They only cost 1.80 euros so she can’t be making that much on them surely.

I've found another addiction, a new website, Stumbleupon.com. I could spend all day on it. Basically you customise your settings to the type of websites which interest you and click the stumble button for it to bring up random websites that you will like to read. I've trawled through hundreds this last few days and even added this blog to it. Having said that, I really must spend less time on the computer and crack on with learning German and enjoying things outside this electronic box.

I had a really bad migrane this morning. One where I just couldn't lift my head up. I put it down to lack of sleep (too long on the internet!), smoking again, change in the weather and staring at this screen too much. Luckily it slowly went after a nap and a few tablets.

We watched Forest Gump tonight. I never get bored of it. It's right up there in my top 5 films of all time. It's certainly better than that Shining crap which I looked up today on IMDB.com and it was rated 8.5 out of 10!! That is the 49th best movie of all time WTF!!! Forest gump got 8.6, the 33rd best movie ever. I'd put it higher than that.

Agnieszka seems in a really good mood lately. She keeps making me laugh by referring to herself as 'us'. It's bay talk 24/7. Bless her. I need to start paying more attention and enjoying the moment with her. I hope we can get to the doctors soon to have the pregnancy confirmed and see what our next steps are. Neither of us have a clue about what to do here in Germany. There's an obsession creeping in about what she can eat and can't eat, morning sickness and symptoms. It seems the only symptom she has is that her breasts hurt and that she hates the smell of alcohol.

I had a couple of beers tonight which went down really well. I worked out that it's actually cheaper for me to drink beer at home rather than juices. It's about 40p a bottle where as a litre of juice is about 90p. I wonder if I can talk her into me sticking with beer in future. :-P

Ok the flood got out of hand! I had to empty our storage area this morning because everything was getting ruined. About ten trips up and down from the basement and I managed to get everything into our apartment and neatly away until we can sort through it. The landlord, or housemeister as they call them over here was trying to sort it out today and called a plumber in but from what I'm hearing it's how the building was built and theres little chance of them sorting it out properly. Thank god we will be out of here soon otherwise I might just give a toss.

I managed a really good tidy and clean today and the place looks immaculate. I can't live in mess and feel better knowing it's getting the Daniel touch at long last.

I cocked up with the whole smoking thing today :-(. I just can't do it. Not yet anyway. I'll keep the cigs to a minimum and try stopping again soon.

We found another film to watch tonight which I didn't recognise in the cupboard at first because the title was in Spanish but it was an all time classic, The Shining! Or at least I seem to remember it was a classic and told Agnieszka it was because she's never seen it. In reality, after watching it, the only description I can come up with right now is a complete and utter bag of crap. I can't believe how bad it was!! We must have been easily entertained back in the 80's to appreciate that toilet content. I never did like Jack Nicholson films and now I remember why. That movie is never going to waste 2 hours of my life again...that's a promise.

I'm getting on quite well with this blog and am almost ready to publish it around the various sites. I have Nikola working on a header for me and still have a few ideas to improve the look and content but overall it's certainly up to a readable level. If I can keep it up for the whole year I'll definately have enough content to work on for my ultimate idea. I want a book out of it. Not necessarily a book to publish, but a book for my child to read in years to come. A book to help him/her understand what our lives were all about when they were born.

I've made a right mess of my nose. Agnieszka told me I had a spot on it yesterday so I stupidly tried scratching it off. I didn't manage it but I did manage to scrape a one inch piece of flesh away, make it bleed and put me in the running for the casting of a modern day version of The Elephant Man!! Gggrrrhhhh, I can be stupid sometimes....more than most LOL.

Spring is in the air! A lovely day with almost all of the snow gone now. Even the big piles have melted which surprised me. I took advantage of the weather and cleaned the balcony so it's ready to sit on again. Then the council or whatever they are called out here were going up the street pruning the trees. Their generator and chainsaw are a bit noisy but I can live with it. It seems to take them 1 hour for every tree though so they might be here for a while.

I took the time to look after the houseplants today too. pruning off all the bad and feeding and watering the good, moving them around and cleaning all the leaves. They certainly look a lot better. When we move I'm going to get loads of plants. I want to show off my gardening skills, inside and out.

Agnieszka came home in a bad mood. Owners not paying on time as usual. They have so much money and have no idea how much it effects us poorer people when they decide to send it 2-3 weeks late.

We had floods downstairs again. The landlord was there with some kind of a machine to try and suck it all up. I just left him to it. It's not our job to fix this stupid building. I can't wait to get a nice bigger place that I can really call home.

I've decided this stopping smoking just isn't a reality. I can't do it. The craving never seems to be going away. Sussie is coming tomorrow, I'll have to get some off her. I feel bad because Agnieszka is doing so well but I just am not as strong as her. Maybe I can cut right down but stopping entirely just doesn't seem like an option to me right now.

We got on to the subject of holidays again this evening. We do seem to both agree that Dubrovnik in Croatia would be lovely. Then we toyed with the idea of driving there, it's only about 700 miles. Then we thought about hiring a caravanette. That really got me excited. Oh how I've always wanted one of them. It would be great if we could ever afford one. I couldn't stop thinking of all the countries we could visit and stop for a while in on our way to and from Croatia. We could fit in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic all in one holiday!! That would be 7 new countries to add to my list!! I want to travel so much. Then it hit home about us having a baby and I think it might have to be put on hold but it's certainly an idea stuck in my head now until it comes true.

About Me

I've not much to say really. I'm Daniel Holdsworth, 37 years old and from West Yorkshire in England but have just moved over here to the eastern side of Berlin.
This is a diary for my own benefit really.
This is a very exciting year for me, full of some great stories and adventures which I really just want to get down in writing for me to look back on in years to come.